Supervillain Studios

At GDC, I had a chance to speak with Todd Morgan, a senior producer at SuperVillain Studios, about Fat Princess: A Fistful of Cake for the PSP. It was the second time I’ve seen the game, so I already knew what to expect. I already knew that the game features 50 percent more maps and more modes. It’s pretty much more of everything, which is never a bad thing when it comes to this team-based hack and slasher.

Here are some quick tidbits and impressions from that interview as well as the PlayStation Portable shindig last week in San Francisco:

NEW MAPS and REBALANCED CHARACTERS: So what does 50 percent more maps mean exactly? It means that players will go through six new maps along with the old originals. To make the game work for the 24 characters on screen, SuperVillain had to eliminate some pathways and shrink some of the maps. In the PS3 version, there were always three roads to enter a base — low, medium and high — but in this portable edition, the team had to make sacrifices and cut some of them. In addition, Morgan said that the archers were pretty powerful in the PlayStation 3 edition, so in the new one, the SuperVillain team toned them down. I haven’t really noticed other changes, but then again, I still need to spend more time with the game.

A MIX OF AI AND HUMAN OPPONENTS: Sure there may be 24 characters on screen, but that doesn’t mean there are 24 people. Mixed in throughout each map are AI characters that help create the game’s familiar chaos. Most of the matches will be 4 vs. 4 with a up to three AI characters thrown in for each human one. A match can have anywhere from 24 to 28 characters (counting a third nonplayable faction AI). With these sacrifices, the game can still run at 30 fps. It’s pretty smooth.

Like the console version, the premise of Fistful of Cake is simple. Players have to defend their princess while trying to capture their rival’s maiden. The game supports 8 players vs. 8 players online via ad hoc or infrastructure while the single-player mode lets gamers go against 23 other AI-controlled opponents.

Supervillain concentrated on improving the single-player experience because traveling around, players may not always have a reliable Internet connection. There are going to be more levels and scenarios as players unfamiliar with the game learn their roles as warriors, archers, mages, priests and workers. Overall, Matt Morton of Santa Monica Studios said there’s going to be 50 percent more content in addition to stuff in the original.